North Korea nuclear test crosses a line

San Francisco Chronicle

July 5, 2017

Photo: STR, AFP/Getty Images

North Korea’s ICBM missile launch on July 4.

North Korea’s ICBM missile launch on July 4.

It’s hard to know which is more frustrating and enraging: North Korea’s ever more provocative missile launches or the empty responses from the outside world. There are no ready solutions, as President Trump is learning the hard way.

His outlook isn’t working. He’s tried mixing an appeal to China for help along with blustery promises that the North won’t get anywhere with a weapons and rocket buildup. That approach was already falling apart when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un chose July 4 to fire off his most powerful device to date: an intercontinental missile that might hit Alaska.

The rocket shot 1,700 miles nearly straight up, landing in the Sea of Japan, where previous missiles have splashed down. But if the North can flatten that steep arc and stretch out the route, then the coastal edge of the U.S. including San Francisco and Los Angeles could be in the crosshairs. Loading on a nuclear warhead, which will take additional time, would be the final, menacing step.

A rogue nuclear state has bedeviled the prior three presidents. Each tried negotiations, threats and sanctions that dragged out the problem but didn’t solve it. The options are growing bleaker and more constrained.

The best suggestion may be the one Trump is least equipped to pursue: determined negotiations and a unified global community. Steady attention and a restrained hand aren’t in this president’s DNA.

The other options don’t make sense. Military strikes on the North are viewed as an all-around disaster, with Kim pummeling South Korea’s capital city and industrial base with long-range artillery. The North would lose an extended war, but at a horrendous human cost to all sides.

China is no longer Trump’s diplomatic silver bullet. The president had hoped that Beijing’s leader, Xi Jinping, might pressure the North since China is its lone major business partner. But that push has proved half-hearted at best.

That leaves talks, uncertain as that sounds, as the only alternative. Trump needs to face that reality.